The German Legal Dictionary (DRW)
The German Legal Dictionary (DRW) is a comprehensive dictionary of historical legal language that covers the legally relevant vocabulary of German (as well as other West Germanic languages) from the beginning of written records in late antiquity through the early 19th century.
In addition to legal terms such as“excise tax,”“Pfefferlehen,” and“easement,” the dictionary also covers words from everyday language whenever they take on special significance in a legal context; for example, the DRW includes entries on“kiss,”“laugh,” and“sensual.” It explains professions, tax terms, coins, and weights—many of which are often forgotten today. Articles such as“field,” “celebrate,” “neighborhood,”and“Saubär”reflect the everyday reality of legal life. The DRW is thus not only a central reference work for legal historians but also a helpful tool for anyone working with historical German (or West Germanic) texts. Not least because of its generally accessible online version, the dictionary is therefore used far beyond Germany’s borders.
To date, approximately 100,000 entries covering the letters “A” through “S” have been completed. The articles are compiled by an interdisciplinary team of scholars at the DRW research center, drawing on an archive of approximately 2.5 million examples and a growing text database. The underlying corpus contains about 8,400 titles—sources and source collections of a wide variety of text genres from diverse regions (primarily Central) Europe. The project covers not only words from all stages of the German language—including High German and Low German—but also from other West Germanic languages, such as Old English, Lombardic, Old Frisian, and Middle Dutch.
Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1897 by the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities , the dictionary project has been overseen by the Heidelberg Academy since . The DRW was one of the first dictionaries in Germany to go online in 1997–99. The retro-digitization of the old volumes was made possible by a grant from the German Research Foundation.
Publications by the research center
You can find information about other publications from the research center here.
Terms of Delivery
For information on delivery terms, please contact:
Verlag J.B. Metzler, Part of Springer Nature
Springer-Verlag GmbH, Uhlandstraße 14, D-70182 Stuttgart
Pronouncement of judgment, illustration from the Laienspiegel (1509)
The Dictionary of Old German Legal Language
The German Legal Dictionary (DRW) is not an encyclopedic reference work, but a dictionary. This means that it presents individual words and their meanings, rather than legal institutions or legal concepts—including their history and various terms—under a single umbrella term.
The German Legal Dictionary is—as a dictionary of the older language—a historical dictionary. It covers legal language from the beginning of the written tradition in Latin documents from the Migration Period up to around 1800. For contemporary legal language, you should consult a modern legal dictionary. Examples include those published by Creifelds and Köbler.
Furthermore, it is a dictionary of legal German. According to the theory of the 19th century, in which the DRW was conceived, “German” serves as a generic term for the entire West Germanic language family, as Jacob Grimm established in his introduction to the German Dictionary: “so that the Frisian, Dutch, Old Saxon, and Anglo-Saxon languages are likewise included in the German language in the narrower sense” [Volume I, Leipzig 1854, p. XIV].
Finally, the German Legal Dictionary is a dictionary of legal language. The term “legal language” does not refer to technical jargon in the strict sense, but rather to general vocabulary as it relates to the law. It illustrates how legal concepts and legal institutions have found expression in everyday language. The DRW thus contains not only legal technical terms, but also all words of general language, provided they occur in legal contexts. Thus, even an adjective like “naked” is included—in its legally relevant meaning as “in a state of nudity as evidence of adultery.” You will therefore find words such as “to make,” “kiss,” “cauldron,” and “lime tree” alongside “litigation contestation,” “pledge constitution,” and “parish field.”
Document archive card index shelving
History of the DRW
97
The DRW was Academy of Sciences and Humanities as an institution of the former Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities . This was the classical era of German legal history, marked by figures such as Karl von Amira, Heinrich Brunner, Richard Schröder, and Ulrich Stutz; and with the compilation of the Deutsches Wörterbuch, Friedrich Kluge’s Etymologisches Wörterbuch, the Schweizerisches Idiotikons, and several other major dialect dictionaries, it was a golden age of lexicography.
The DRW’s founding committee included the legal historians Karl von Amira, Heinrich Brunner, Ferdinand Frensdorff, Otto von Gierke, and Richard Schröder, as well as the historian Ernst Dümmler and the linguistic historian Karl Weinhold. The Heidelberg legal scholar Richard Schröder took on the role of organizational director—thus, the dictionary project was based in Heidelberg from the very beginning. The founding committee published the dictionary plan in the Savigny Journal of Legal History and called for contributions to the dictionary. With success: by the time the first volume of the dictionary was completed in 1932, some 250 people had participated in the excerpting of the sources, including students, “elders, doctors, professors, archivists, teachers, and laypeople knowledgeable in history and linguistics from all walks of life,” as Eberhard von Künßberg summarizes in the preface to the first volume of the DRW.
1917
Eberhard Freiherr von Künßberg was entrusted with the direction of the dictionary. In this role, he demonstrated “the utmost prudence and the finest linguistic and legal acumen.” Furthermore, since , he safeguarded the dictionary from making concessions to the prevailing spirit of the times. His death in 1941 and the aftermath of World War II dealt the dictionary a severe blow, the effects of which continued well into the 1970s.
1959
The Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities responsibility for the dictionary: until that point, it had still been legally affiliated with the German Academy in Berlin (East) as the legal successor to the Royal Prussian Academy.
1970
The start of a series of urgently needed reforms at the company.
1971
Günther Dickel will assume the role of scientific director of the dictionary.
1973
Heino Speer has been appointed director of the research center.
1985
Following the death of G. Dickel, Speer also assumed the role of scientific director of the DRW. This also marked the beginning of the gradual introduction of electronic data processing.
1999
The DFG-funded global and free online publication of at least part of the dictionary has also yielded visible results. Meanwhile, nearly all completed dictionary entries are made available to Internet users both in a (fully searchable, extensively linked) electronic version and as an online facsimile of the print edition. This online offering is complemented by facsimiles and, in some cases, electronic full-text versions of numerous source texts, providing additional research options.
2007
With Heino Speer's retirement, Andreas Deutsch has been appointed director of the research center.
No fewer than five volumes of the DRW (namely volumes 7–11) were edited and shaped academically by Heino Speer. He has now turned his attention increasingly to the DFG project DRQEdit, which he initiated and directs, and which aims to make all important German-language legal texts from the 15th and 16th centuries available online. He is now primarily engaged in Austrian legal history (see his RepÖstRG project).
The DRW is being compiled according to a fixed publication schedule. A double issue is scheduled to be completed every twelve to thirteen months; five double issues make up one volume. Each volume is expected to contain over 5,000 word entries, meaning that the total vocabulary to be covered in the DRW will amount to approximately 120,000 word entries. The dictionary project is scheduled to be completed in 2035/36.
New informational video
A documentary film about the German Legal Dictionary
The new five-minute film about the research center describes how the dictionary is compiled, provides a brief overview of the project’s history, and offers a few tips and tricks for using the freely accessible online version. Simply click on the image to play the YouTube video (as external content):
New DRW Double Issue
DRW Double Issue “Vol. 14, Issues 7 and 8” Now Available
The fourth double issue of Volume 14 of the German Legal Dictionary was completed in early 2023. This double issue contains 1,118 entries—beginning with “taugbar” and ending with “Toppschilling.”
For Volume 14, the publisher has slightly revised the DRW’s design. The format of the issues has been adapted to international standards. For those who have their DRW volumes bound, however, this does not entail any significant change, as the internal print format remains entirely unchanged; the volumes can therefore be trimmed to the usual format during binding.
DRW Conference
The conference“Land Rights and Land Rights Reforms” took placefrom March 29 to 31, 2023
Following the conference on “Municipal Laws and Municipal Law Reforms”—for which the conference proceedings have already been published (see below)—a companion event was held in late March 2023 focusing on provincial laws and provincial law reforms. These are essentially similar to their municipal counterparts and often appear to be precursors to today’s laws. They regulate not only the organization of urban public life, including criminal law and procedure, but also the affairs of citizens, such as family and inheritance law.
About 500 years ago, the reception of Roman law in Germany gave rise to a new generation of territorial “codifications,” the so-called land law reforms, often drafted by learned jurists. They were not always thoroughly imbued with Roman law, but they were significantly more systematic than their predecessors. The burgeoning printing press enabled their dissemination in often lavish editions with ornate title pages. But what are the distinctive features of the land law reforms? Are there significant differences compared to the municipal law reforms?
Scholars from various disciplines presented significant land laws and land law reforms at the conference and discussed their content and language. A conference proceedings volume is planned.
The detailed conference program can be found here (PDF).
Harbarth, President of the Federal Constitutional Court, offered his congratulations
125 Years of the German Legal Dictionary – 2022 Anniversary
What is a “Schnatbaum”? And what is a “Stirnenstößer”? The German Legal Dictionary (DRW) answers these and many other questions. This comprehensive dictionary of historical German legal language celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2022. Work on the research project, which Academy of Sciences and Humanities now Academy of Sciences and Humanities at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , began in 1897. Around 100,000 entries have already been published—and 1,000 new entries are added each year.
Harbarth, President of the Federal Constitutional Court, offered his congratulations
Stephan Harbarth, President of the Federal Constitutional Court, congratulated the Heidelberg Research Center on this remarkable anniversary. In his remarks, he emphasized the key contribution of the *Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch* to the study of German legal language. The dictionary, he said, brings to life the “linguistic dimension of our historical legal terminology.” The “insights that emerge when the German Legal Dictionary uncovers the roots of our contemporary legal language” are remarkable. Harbarth added, verbatim:
“In the 125th year of the *Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch*, it is time to express our heartfelt gratitude to the *Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch* Research Center for its care and preservation of our historical linguistic heritage, and to convey our admiration for what has been achieved thus far. The path that was embarked upon 125 years ago has already come a long way. And yet, as Jacob Grimm wrote in his *Poesie des Rechts* (*The Poetry of Law*), ‘much that is believed to be lost and gone […] remains to be resolved’ from ‘the entire language’s treasure.’ The task, therefore, remains as immense as it is significant.”
1,400 years of linguistic history in a single dictionary
The German Legal Dictionary traces the entire development of German legal language—from the earliest (West)Germanic linguistic records through to the 19th century. For example, the earliest attestation of the word “Graf” comes from a royal charter dated 479 AD. The entry for “absetzen” even includes an attestation from before 384 AD—from Bishop Wulfila’s Gothic Bible, which is used for comparative analysis. In addition to High and Low German sources, the DRW includes, among others, Lombardic, Old English, Old Frisian, and Middle Dutch texts. Only in this way can the linguistic and legal development of Central Europe be adequately reflected. Hardly any other dictionary covers such a broad time frame.
Over 100,000 articles have been completed
Sorted alphabetically, the German Legal Dictionary begins with the entry “Aachenfahrt.” In 2021, the final entries beginning with “S” were completed. The double issue 5-6 of Volume 14—containing entries from “Subjekt” to “Taufzeuge”—is currently in press. The dictionary is being compiled by an interdisciplinary team of scholars. “Our goal is to explain the sometimes complex meanings of words in a way that is as accessible as possible,” says Professor Andreas Deutsch, who has served as the project’s scientific director since . “Since the dictionary explains not only core legal vocabulary but also legally relevant words from everyday language, the DRW is not only a reference work for lawyers and legal historians, but for anyone interested in history. We can see this very clearly in the user statistics on the Internet.”
A research project in five German states
Founded in 1897 as a project of Academy of Sciences and Humanities Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities Berlin, work on the German Legal Dictionary began during the German Empire. Over the course of several years, up to 250 volunteers from a wide variety of European countries combed through important legal sources for relevant terms. They recorded significant examples on index cards. The approximately 2.5 million “reference slips” collected in the end were stored in the “Dictionary Archive” in Heidelberg, which later became the DRW Research Center. It was not until 1914 that the first entries were completed. Then World War I and the global economic crisis that began shortly after the founding of the Weimar Republic hampered the work. During the Nazi reign of terror, Research Center Director Eberhard von Künßberg suffered reprisals because he was married to a Jewish woman. Yet he steered the project undeterred by attempts at political influence. Künßberg’s death and World War II brought the dictionary work to a temporary standstill. The fresh start during the division of Germany proved difficult: Formally, theAcademy of Sciences and Humanities ” succeeded the Prussian Academy, but the Heidelberg-based DRW research center could neither be supervised nor financed from East Berlin. Consequently, the DRW found Academy of Sciences and Humanities new home at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities . The DRW was thus a joint German-German project. The publisher was based in Weimar, and printing took place in the GDR. The DRW began digitization even before German reunification. In addition to the “source notes” from the early years, an electronic text archive has since served as the basis for article editing. As early as 1997, the DRW became one of the first dictionaries in Germany to publish its first articles online. Today, DRW-Online offers numerous additional research options that go far beyond what the founding fathers of 1897 could have imagined.
New anthology
The volume *Municipal Rights and Reforms of Municipal Law* has been published in the DRW series
Andreas Deutsch (ed.), Municipal Charters and Reforms of Municipal Law (Academy Conferences 32; Series of the German Legal Dictionary), 681 pages, approx. 50 illustrations, Prize: €68.00 - 978-3-8253-4898-4, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2021.
The “Newen Reformacion” of the imperial city of Nuremberg (1479) marked the beginning of the era of “municipal law reforms,” which lasted well into the 17th century. With these modernized municipal laws, which appear almost like precursors to today’s codifications, the self-assured magistrates sought to demonstrate their independence and made use of the burgeoning printing press to do so. Shaped by jurists trained in Roman law, the municipal law reforms are more systematic than their predecessors. However, they often contain less Roman law than one might expect.
This volume examines this type of source and—for the first time in this form—provides criteria for defining it. To gain a clear understanding of how it differs from earlier law, the book begins with introductory essays followed by a presentation of individual medieval municipal charters. This is followed by descriptions of the major municipal charter reforms and examples of failed reforms—including examples from beyond the German-speaking world.
In addition to a detailed introduction to the topic by the editor, the volume contains contributions by Gerhard Köbler, Gerhard Dilcher, Arend Mihm, Bernd Kannowski, Katalin Gönczi, Dieter Pötschke, Almuth Bedenbender, Manshu Ide, J. Friedrich Battenberg, Heike Hawicks, Wendt Nassall, Klaus-Peter Schroeder, Johannes Laschinger, Anja Amend-Traut, Petr Kreuz, Sonja Breustedt, Christoph Becker, and Stephan Dusil. For more information about the volume, please visit the publisher’s website:https://www.winter-verlag.de/detail/978-3-8253-4898-4/Deutsch_Hg_Stadtrechtsreformationen/